How To Overcome Decision Paralysis In Songwriting?

Over the last few days, I have been struggling with making a decision.

Not a big thing just deciding how to position my 1-1 coaching offer. Whether as lessons for guitarists specifically or coaching for songwriters focused more on the mind as a foundation for skills like (performing, songwriting, recording etc.)

I’ve been juggling the two options back and forth and just could’t make sense out of it over analysing the outcomes and trying to be perfect.

This morning I went for a walk and listened to smarter people than me on youtube talking about this topic until it finally clicked.

The reason I’ve been putting my decision off is that I’m scared of failing and not being perfect.

The two major pieces here are - fear and perfectionism.

Discomfort with uncertainty of the outcome.

Then it dawn on me, wait a minute, I can see people (myself included) in the creative space doing exactly the same. And paralysis by analysis can be often a source of the writer’s block.

When we are starring at the blank canvas or empty recording software (DAW) it can feel very adventurous but also scary. If we stay in this space of imagination, everything is possible. Whenever we start creating on the other hand, the infinity becomes finite in the physics terms the wave function collapses and the possibilities shrink and the actual thing comes to life.

What if we’ll find out that we cannot do this, what if we’ll have to face the reality of not being where we thought we were.

I have this often when I start recording a piece of music. In my mind it sounds incredible, but when I start filling the tracks with sound waves I realise where I really am, it’s a reality check and I can clearly see how much more effort compared to what I thought it takes to create something really good.

This is entitlement to a simple solution, to the world without struggle and challenge.

We think that that’s what we want, but if we think through this more deeply though we realise that it’s not really what we need.

World without challenge is just stagnation and lack of growth.

The number one solution for this is to appreciate the necessity of uncertainty as that’s what makes life exciting and ultimately worth living.

And so whenever you’re trying to write a song or a piece of music, write a blog post or record a youtube video, be ok with imperfections and learn how to find joy in keep working on them.

Keep it funky!